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If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

O. Henry

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O. Henry
Age: 47 †
Born: 1862
Born: September 11
Died: 1910
Died: June 5
Journalist
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
William Sydney Porter
Olivier Henry
Oliver Henry
Writing
Never
Pleases
Please
Public
Forget
Story
Write
Stories

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Write what you like there is no other rule.
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You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
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Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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Those whom we first love we seldom marry
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We can't buy one minute of time with cash if we could, rich people would live longer.
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Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.
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A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
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It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
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A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
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What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
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When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.
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Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
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It's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it.
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Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.
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We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.
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She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
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By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
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History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
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Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.
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Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.
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